Diary for Sailng on Windwanderer.


Sunday 7th July 2013

2013-07-08

Sunday 7th July 2013

Well today after a few repair jobs, oh I forgot to mention, all the fans in the back half of the boat have decided to not play nice, actually not play at all.

They stopped working a few days ago, The Captain is trying to find the right wire to them, and get it fixed, not easy at all, so far nothing, but he will continue his hunt until he does, well, I hope so.

They have a local get together with a BBQ, at the local bar Captain Jacks, so we decided to go in, and have a bite to eat and a few drinks, and also to get onto there free wifi and download some stuff that we can't do here on the boat.

So off we go armed with lap tops, ipad, phones, cords you name it. We waited for a break in the weather, and set off.

And yeap it poured down just as we got to shore, I'm sure it only happened, cause I had washed and dried my hair before we left... :-/

So two very soaked cruisers get to Captain Jacks, cursing everything and anything, and the place is almost empty, we had got there a bit late.

But they cooked us a burger each, mine with no garlic, and they tasted so so good, or maybe it was just the drinks before hand, but it was nice.

We also wanted to chat to a few people about going through the canal, as we are in two minds of wether to get a Agent or not. If we do everything can be done here, so no going into Colon the next town over.

Colon is a very dangerous city, you never walk the streets or anything, as you will get mugged, you catch a bus to the taxi place and step off the bus straight into a taxi and the taxi will drop you off at the door of the place you need to go to.

But if we go with an agent it comes with a huge price, so yeah still debating that one.

So after chatting for awhile, we needed to go back to the main area and get some more, credit for our phone, while we were at Captain Jacks we got, the girl there to find out our phone number for us, and she told us we only had 12c left on it, she told us just go to any of the local supermarkets as they all sell it.

So off we go, head down the street, Captain Jacks is on top of a hill, and go searching for the shop that we got the SIM card the first day here, and it's closed, great.

So standing in the middle of the street, and I guessed looking lost, a local guy comes up and asked if we need help, and of cause we said yes, he can speak broken English so we explain what we need, he says follow him, so off we go, to make a long story short, we ended up going to 4 different shops until we ended up with a new SIM card from a different carrier, which was ok, but it didn't work, so sitting outside a shop, me typing what we need on a app I down loaded on my ipad to translate English into Spanish, him reading it, we still could get nowhere, we were trying to tell him all we need was just a top up, on the one we had.

Man how hard can it be, so then he grabs the phone rings some guy and hands it to me, at least this guy could speak English but he could not help us at all either.

We are getting very frustrated by now, this guy is saying well just go to a local place and use there wifi instead, we were saying no we want it on the boat like before, so he then calls what he tells us is a taxi, we all can go together back to Captain Jacks and they can fix it there.

( I'm thinking cellars Bek )

But we go and he drops us all off for $1 haha.

So the girl is still there and we explain what is happening, she goes off at this guy like you would not believe, and sends him on his way, he wanted, a $5 tip for helping am not sure what she said to him, but he scurried off very quick.

We had been conned, a lesson learnt, never accept help from locals, they just try and rip you off.

So the guys at Captain Jacks got us back on the previous carrier, and we topped up online on there computer, after a few strong drinks, and about four hours later which should of taken like 10minutes, we headed back to the dingy.

It was pitch black by now and a bit scary, and after a heart stopping moment when we could not find our dingy, all was ok, it had just been moved a bit by someone else, so they could get there dingy in.

We headed back to the boat trying to find it in the dark this was also a challenge, but we got there ok.

I am so hanging out to get back home, where up you can just walk into a shop and get exactly what you want.

Well tomorrow is another day.